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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 3333.PDF
710 BRIDGING THAT GAP This map shows the "deeper penetration" terry routes to the Continent projected by Air Charter idea is now taking shape as project ATL 98 in the hands of ourassociated engineering company. Aviation Traders Ltd., at Southend. DC-4s, which Air Charter have operated for over five years, areplentiful. They are now freely available at around £70,000 apiece and in 1961 will probably cost about £50,000. DC-6s are unlikelyto cost more than £75,000 by 1963-64 and by men it is possible that DC-7s will cost no more. Basically, the idea of the ATL 98is, in the designer's own words, "to put a saw through the aircraft forward of the leading edge of the wing and to build on a newnose in which the crew would be accommodated above the hold, more or less as in the Bristol 170." . The result is almost exactly what one could ask for in a 170successor. It will have at least 68ft of hold space for five small or four of the largest cars and a payload of nearly 19,000 lb. Thetotal cost with conversion should be £130,000 and we can look to future development (with DC-6s and -7s) for a period of notless than 15 years; initial plans are to build ten DC-4/ATL 98s for our own use. "Deeper Penetration" Routes. The new aircraft gives theflexibility required to plan in detail new routes which should interest relatively large numbers of motorists (see "Deeper Pene-tration for the Channel Air Bridgehead," Flight, June 19). A plan which provides services for even a minute percentage of the totalmotorists touring the Continent has attractive repercussions on the utilization problem. Carrying a little a long way helps tobalance some of the problems created by carrying large numbers on short distances, and the resultant increase in fleet utilizationcan bring cheaper fares for both types of customer. This is a lesson illustrated by two of our existing services: carrying fivetimes as many vehicles on the 28 min Calais service as on the 70 min Rotterdam route has shown that differences in revenueare largely balanced by lower costs and greater utilization on the longer stage. Destinations (see map) for our "deeper penetration" routeswere selected from a wide variety of information about motorists' travelling habits. Distances and times are detailed in the tablebelow: — TABLE I: DISTANCES AND FLIGHT TIMES OF DEEPER PENETRATION ROUTES Southend to Paris (Le Bourget) DijonLyons Strasbourg ToursDusseldorf Bremen Distance (n.m.) 181 320 407 350 255 233 323 Flight Time (min)*Bristol 170 ATL 98 83 148 193 162 118 108 149 60 107 137 117 8S 78 108 * Does not include chock-to-chock time. FLIGHT, 11 December 19*9 Attracting the Motorist. In order to provide the rightfrequency of service, the starting point in the United Kingdom had to be investigated. To obtain both an attractive service aiTia reasonable load factor in both directions there is something lii » an optimum frequency for each service, and the wrong selectio '••of timing or frequency can greatly reduce the attractions of tl e service offered. Fares may not be low enough to attract vannumbers of people for the first few years, but there will be large incidental savings in time and money. The number of motoring tourists has gone up steadily even-year, with the ownership of private cars increasing by leaps and bounds. Thus an established route gains a natural increaseannually if its own share in the number going abroad is based or! "attraction" rather than "overflow" from other more establishedservices. Undoubtedly, Silver City and ourselves do cater for a smallnumber turned away if the slightly cheaper boat services are full This percentage is not great, and one way or another it willdoubtless always be with us. The longer range services have so much more to offer that it is extremely unlikely that they will beaffected by this percentage as their attraction is complete in their own right. A number of side benefits arise in the operation of longervehicle-ferry services. For example, a booking clerk requires no more effort or time to book a car to Lyons than to book it toCalais, and the same effect is felt in a hundred ways throughout the operation. There is thus a lowering of overheads in relation torevenue earned. Also, one of the most important features is that keeping a properbalance of long and short routes avoids the temptations of the mass market with its lower efficiency,comfort and standards of per- 7 rsonal service. Importance of Freight. Some assistance from freight and supplementary passengers is necessary for an economic How car registrations and cross- Channel car traffic are rising in unison vehicle-ferry service, not onlybecause of the small average number of passengers for eachcar, but also to cover the peaks and troughs of demand. Sup-plementary passengers do not come in sufficient numbers tohelp in the vital off-season period, but we have had a considerable measure of success inbuilding up freight traffic despite an absurd air freight rates policy practised by I.A.T.A. Three times in recent years freight rateshave been subjected to a five per cent increase. If this was neces- sary, it is extraordinary that commodity rates should not have beenaffected in the same way; in our view, the commodity rate policy is quite out of keeping with present-day requirements. The existing I.A.T.A. commodity rate idea should be replaced bya new structure based on surcharges for value and volume. The reduction for quantity—at present only at 45 kg—should beextended to 100, 250, 500, and 1,000 kg, with additional rebates for regular traffic. There should be rate-differentials for freightcarried by fast passenger aircraft or freight services and deferred traffic. Also important would be the standard use of a monetarystructure more simple than the English one, which req-iires rates to be arbitrarily rounded off. ^4\ PRIVATE CARS REGISTERED ,'(millions)! 5 4 t, 2 1 —• —' ~ Chun CROSS-CHANNdreds of thoixrt 1956 Seen here in minia- ture is the DC-4/ ATL-98, Air Charter's new vehicle ferry. Ten are to be constructed by Aviation Traders and should enter service in 1961
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